The Neoteric Listener...
and the Velodyne Optimum-10 subwooferby Dean Seislove

When
I first posited the notion of reviewing a Velodyne
subwoofer to PFO editor Dave Clark, he politely
suggested that the model being considered was
probably too much for my shack. What he was really
saying was, "Why in the world would anyone living in
a such a broom closet want more bottom end than it
has when you're sitting in it?" Which is all very
sensible and correct. For my little room, my Tannoys
are adequate, and the Nola Boxers currently in my
system (review forthcoming) don't need any help in
the bass department, so what's the point? After all,
like canons and current, too much speaker sounds
like a good idea until it all blows up in your face.
But anybody who has standmounts (or modestly endowed
floorstanders for that matter) knows the answer to
this question. No matter how good the sound, there
are those selections, those certain moments when you
just want the presentation to be a little
more... well, a little more. So when I asked Ann
Gargiulo of Veleodyne which model would be the best,
she replied, "Well... in our humble opinion, you can
never have too big of a sub, so we think an
Optimum-10 is just fine for your room." As if I
needed convincing! She graciously offered me the
option of receiving both the Optimum-10 and its
smaller sibling, the Optimum-8. It barely needs
mentioning that only asked for the 10. What if I
pushed the 8 to the edge of distraction and realized
that I needed to go 2 better?

I
imagine that, once we've plunked down a good bit of
cash for our new basso profund-o machine, most of us
are going to make a beeline for all of our
recordings "on the down low." That's certainly what
I did, anyway, and so a big part of my listening
featured plenty of large orchestras, synthesized
bass, and Fender P's. First up was the RCA Victor
Symphony Orchestra (Robert Russell Bennett
conducting) playing "The Song of the High Seas" from
Richard Rodgers' Victory at Sea. Right then and
there, I realized my folly for not heeding my
editor's caution. The clash of kettle drums, double
basses, booming brass, and swirling string
arrangements nearly Japanese-lanterned my
rectangular listening room by pushing out the
sidewalls. I guess I could've gotten by with the
Optimum-8, at that. But, man, what a glorious rush
of nautical noise! When I muted the Velodyne to
measure the contrast, my seven seas went from
swashbuckling to salad dressing. Even though the
Optimum-10 is not as large as the some subwoofer
tanks, it has plenty of power for any small to
medium sized room, no matter how club-like your
atmosphere, and I'd bet that it would be perfectly
adequate for a larger room at sane levels.

Unlike some subwoofers I've auditioned, the
Optimum-10 enables me to hear the texture of
instruments typically too low in frequency to be
adequately detected, much less enjoyed. Unless
you're a large sea animal, all recordings are
something of a subsonic guessing game, because our
ears just aren't tuned to easily retrieve that
information. Biology favors voice recognition, I
guess, and while some people may miss the bassoon,
nobody has trouble hearing the banjo. Moreover, all
subwoofers, even poor ones, push out that familiar
low-frequency physical sensation of "feeling" the
sound. It's a fun effect for a little while, but
soon you want off the carnival ride. What's nice
about the Optimum-10, however, is that it can give
up tremendous low-frequency information even at the
low subwoofer settings that I feel comfortable with
for everyday listening. But just in case you're
wondering, this sub can still wallop the bejeezus
out of your best techno and electronica and still
have plenty left for your Wagner Ring and German
speed metal collection. To illustrate, Yello's "Call
it Love" is more than the usual staple of "boom,
boom, boom." This song is a wonderful mixture of
softly intoned voices, overdriven guitar fills, and
theatrical effects panning that rewards a setup rich
on soundstaging and dynamic attack. The Velodyne
Optimum-10 has the fluidity to fill the spaces of
the room with mammoth bass runs without obscuring
the lighting quick appearances and disappearances of
the guitars, vocal intonations, and secondary
instruments. As with most Yello tunes, electronic
bass is front and center (and sideways and
ceilingways and definitely floorways) but in this
instance, it's the syncopation between the the bass
and the rhythm guitar that holds the song together.
The first thing that I noticed when playing this
selection is how well the Velodyne's auto-EQ works.
Plug in the microphone, sit in the desired listening
spot, press the EQ button on the sub's remote, and
wait for it to send out 12 test tones designed to
shape the EQ for best effect. Personally, I'm not
the sort who's going to walk around the room with an SPL meter and a t-square to find the prime subwoofer
placement. In my shack, the calculus for perfect
sound involves a jack hammer and an eviction notice,
so I let the Optimum-10 do all the math, and I was
very pleased by the results. The most dramatic
difference that I noticed was in the improvement in
the overall coherence of the sound. While it may
have been true in days past that subwoofers were
mainly designed to mimic the rat-ta-tats and kablams
heard in a movie theatre, today's subwoofers can do
more than ripple the surface of your soda pop. Yes,
the Optimum-10 worked superbly in adjunct with my
blue ray player, and in home theater applications I
can't see how anyone could want more, but its
primary virtue is its talent for making music
playback richer and more fulfilling.

If
you're old enough, you know that learning how to
play bass guitar once involved a lot of time
picking up the tone arm and replaying passages
so that you could figure out what the hell was
going on buried way, way, down in the mix. I
spent plenty of afternoons with borrowed basses
trying to unearth enough notes to bluff my way
through ragged evening rehearsals, and it gave
me a certain love-hate relationship with the
rock n' rotosound of most
pop/rock recordings. Today, while not everyone
appreciates modern remixes of past masters, there's
no doubt that one of the prime directives for
engineers is to be able to discern every track from
one to sixteen. It may not always be music, but it
sure is separate. Anyway, playing the recent Rolling
Stones Beggar's Banquet SACD, it was definitely a
treat to be able to appreciate Bill Wyman's bass
lines on "No Expectations." One of the premier
examples of Englishman's blues, the bass work on
this song ties together the simple arrangement
rhythm, slide guitar, bass guitar and vocals (other
than wood blocks, Charlie spends most of his time
sipping Watney's Red Barrel on this cut). This song
is no Yello slam fest, no orchestral epic, why would
anyone need or want a subwoofer? All you need to do
is listen to how much a good subwoofer adds to the
sonic presentation of this song to see how essential
a subwoofer is in conveying a more satisfying
auditory experience. Besides the speed of the
Velodyne-10, what I really find of value is it's
talent for rendering even the lowest frequencies as
musical tones, and not just as loud caricatures of
the notes being played. On Bhatt, Douglass and
Meyer's album Bourbon and Rosewater, the title track
is a Delta-meets-the Dehli corn stew featuring
plenty of fast picking and swamp blues done North
Indian style. With the Optimum-10, the rich,
pulsating drone of the bass enables the dobro and
the mohan vina to engage in a free play of virtuoso
runs and harmonized melodies. With the subwoofer
muted, the third side of the triangle is removed and
the trance is diminished. The Optimum enables the
lower frequency to be heard and enjoyed, while still
keeping pace with all of the commotion going on at
ear level, which is exactly what you'd like in a
good subwoofer.

Finally, if nothing else convinces you that this is
a subwoofer that deserves your consideration, then
audition it just to experience the marvelous remote
that sets the volume, offers up to four phase
options and four EQ presets, turns on and off the
display light, and even enables you to select a
night setting for listening to music in the deep
a.m. without disturbing granddad in repose. As
someone who loves to tinker with the volume and
settings of subwoofers, this remote is worth the
$1699 MSRP (although the street price is about $400
lower) price of admission alone.

Ok,
maybe I could've gotten by with the Optimum-8, but
the Optimum-10 has been such a larger than life
houseguest, it just won't be nearly as much fun
without the Velodyne to show the picture below the
bottom of the frame. I found this subwoofer to be
not only powerful, which is easy, but also extremely
musical, which is a tougher challenge. Plenty of
handy features, too!

Available in hand-rubbed black gloss (I was shipped
a stunning example of this finish) or cherry veneer,
the Optimum-10 is relatively compact, as subwoofers
go.